Hi all,
Bit late for a full rundown of the night, but for a first meetup I think that was a great success. More details about future meetings later when I process the info and make the time for planning.
Thanks all for coming and sharing!
Cheers,
Ben.
SUCCESS. Great to meet you all and share + learn with locals =D
Look forward to more!
Was a good night, much larger turnout than expected!
Just checked my computer and the card driver wasn’t actually up to date enough for Cycles gpu… Derp. I downgraded the driver recently to try and help 3ds max issues.
Long story short it runs much faster than what you saw!
Anyway, work to do, report of the night later.
I was impressed enough with the speed of it, but thats awesome youve got it running even faster.
Heres the full node setup which I didnt get to show because Ben’s computer hated me 
Ill be prepairing more stuff for the next meetup, would love to show off some BGE stuff, was super unprepared for this one 
Awesome night, thanks. Great to know that there’s so many Blenderheads in Adelaide!
Thanks Ben and Monkeystack for getting this organised. Looking forward to the next one.
Still no details on the next one, was away from computers for the bulk of the weekend. I did get around to writing a brief overview on the last one, but it didn’t get on Blendernation (yet). Might as well post it here for those who couldn’t come or are interested in how it went. Apologies if I forgot something or spelt a name wrong.
The recent Blender User Group meeting in Adelaide was a great success. Big thanks to Michael, Lee, Duann, Alex and Levon for sharing and again to Monkeystack for hosting.
After a pleasant round of chitchat and greetings, I got the ball rolling with a demonstration of the Cycles renderer with an emphasis on characters. (Slightly embarrassing side note, my drivers weren’t actually up to date for CUDA on the night so “only” showed off the CPU rendering.) Michael then continued on by showing some very high res Cycles renders (up to 7k from memory!) and talking about his findings as he pushes Cycles in its current form.
Lee gave an overview of creating the trailer for the CG Masters Rigging DVD – animation, rig controls, adding titles and the sequencer. Also of note were his recent efforts in talking to local schools about the potential to use not only Blender but the growing training material as well. This is certainly something I’m keen to keep an eye on.
Duann then shared about his work with Shapeways and gave a general overview of what the company can offer artists. Some really cool examples were shown including a very neat little walker. After some further questions and discussion, Alex shared his experience with getting a Shapeways print made and painting it. Neat trick – simulate the model falling in the BGE to see if it will stand on its own when printed!
To cap off the night, Levon shared some of his work on various projects and those of us who were left (rather long but enjoyable night) had a quick chat about future meetings. It sounds like two or three months between meetings is a good time frame to aim for, but on a practical note we’ll see what happens. Maybe next time we’ll even have some photos to show. More details about future meetings when I have them.
Again, big thanks to all who came – it was great fun!
Cheers,
Ben.
Was great to meat everyone there.
Also interesting to see cycles ( I can never seem to find a build on graphicall that doesn’t say ‘no cuda’ or ‘cpu’ so i never download one )
Looking forward to next time, and hope to bring something interesting along just as soon as i’ve made it…
Shouts to Monkeystack and Lee and others for organising everything.
See you guys there
@iisthphir - in case you missed me mentioning it, the version I showed on the night was actually cpu, so it’s still quick. Just not as quick.
@Ben,
Yeah I got that, I just wanted a gpu utilising version to see what all the fuss is about
Should get much faster rendering out of gtx 470 than i7 920. theres recently a cuda version been added to graphicall but its confusing me now so no results yet… :spin:
Uh, I don’t actually live in Adelaide, but I am just curious, exactly how many people attended the meetup?
I didn’t get around to doing an actual headcount, but 12-15 I think. It was a full but smallish room.